Tuesday, June 16, 2009

THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY

I think we are going to see, incrementally, perhaps, a rise in the ratings of former president Bush. Iraq is proving to be amazingly resilient, not only functioning as a democracy, but by withstanding the best efforts of Iran to kill it off, proving destabilizing to Iran itself.

By removing Saddam, and trying to isolate Ahmadinejad and appeal to the Iranian people, Bush at least tried to prep the landscape for democratic change.

In contrast, Obama's past siren calls to quit Iraq, the "optional" war, his snubbing of Maliki, his ahistorical efforts to charm the Islamic Street, and apologies to theocratic Iran while lavishing attention on Ahmadinejad put him on the wrong side of history.

If Obama were wise, he would get out pronto a statement condemning the anti-democratic violence of the Iranian government, and suggesting it follow the Iraq example of free and internationally inspected elections.

At some point, one should see that moral equivalence and multicultural non-judgementalism, however catchy for the moment, are as stupid as they are amoral, and will put the U.S in a foolish, "make it up as we go along" position.

Can we at least see an end to all the past Iranian fluff offered by Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and NY Times columnists as over the years they praised what they claimed was a good start for democracy?

How did it come to pass that the Left thought cozying up to a brutal thug like Ahmadinejad was proof of statecraft superior to Bush's tough position that he was a nut and at odds with the aspirations for freedom of the Iranian people?

There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic, and at that particular moment simple ideas were what was needed, even if he was disingenuous,” said Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star. “It was bolstered by the presence of a U.S. Army in the center of the Middle East. It created a sense that change was possible, that things did not always have to be as they were.”

He then goes on to comment:

Leaving aside the accusation that Bush was disingenuous -- I suspect history will reveal that to be substantially untrue, which may have been part of the problem -- the war for Bush's foreign policy legacy will be particularly protracted and contentious. The historiography will not resolve itself, or even stabilize, until two conditions obtain. First, we need to see what happens in the Arab Middle East. If in a generation or two the clown kings and tinpot dictators have given way to more pluralistic governments, even if not Western or secular in form, then it will be possible and perhaps even intellectually honest to draw a line from the earthquakes of the Bush years, including particularly the frankly revolutionary idea that

[f]or 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East — and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.

So, how did it come to pass that the left and its messiah believe cozying up to repressive regimes and brutal thugs is a good thing?